How Can Humanity Find the Christ Again?

Schmidt Number: S-3625

On-line since: 30th November, 2015

VII

Experiences of the Old Year and Outlook over the New Year
(Part 1)

Dornach31st December, 1918

It relates to an elementary
need of every human soul that on the last day of the year our thoughts
should dwell on the transitory nature of time. For this need we may
well look back in self-examination to find what has entered our external
life and also our soul during the course of the year. We may well cast
a glance back to the progress we have made in life, to the fruits of
the experiences life has offered us. From such retrospect some degree
of light may fall upon feelings that made our life seem more or less
worthwhile, more or less difficult, or more or less satisfactory. We
are indeed never able to observe our life as if it were the life of
an isolated human being; we are obliged to consider it in its connection
with the world as a whole and mankind as a whole. And if we are earnestly
striving for an anthroposophical view of the world, we will feel the
need with particular insistence to consider our relation to the world
again and again at this constant turning-point of time, this ending
of one year and beginning of another.

Since, however, our present
review takes place at a time when there is so much turmoil in our souls,
when all that mankind has suffered in these last four-and-a-half years
is still burdening us, when as anthroposophists we observe our relation
to the world and to humanity against the background of unprecedented
world events, then our survey of the past year takes on quite a special
character.

The thoughts I particularly
wish to bring you this evening may perhaps be looked upon as an insertion,
irrelevant to our previous context. At the moment we are holding before
our mind's eye the transitory nature of time and of events in time,
and how all this affects the human soul. But as students of spiritual
science we cannot forget that when we look upon time flowing by and
upon our experiences during its passing, we meet with many difficulties.
Those especially whose hearts and minds are given over seriously to
anthroposophical thought confront these difficulties in their observation
of the world.

You all know the strange
experience people have who have not travelled very much in trains. As
they look out the window they receive the impression that the whole
landscape is moving, hurrying past them. Of course it is they themselves
who are moving with the train, but they ascribe the movement to the
land the train is passing through. Gradually by accustoming themselves
to their situation they get the better of this illusion and put in its
place the correct idea of the sights they see through the window. Now,
fundamentally but in a more complicated way, we ourselves—where
the affairs of the world are concerned — are in a similar situation
to those good people in the train. They are deceived about what is at
rest in the landscape and what is moving. We sit within our physical
and etheric bodily nature that was given to us as a kind of vehicle
when we left the spiritual realms to come into physical existence between
birth and death, and in this vehicle we hurry through the events of
this world. We observe the world by means of this physical vehicle in
which we rush along the course of earthly existence. And the world as
we observe it in this way is in most cases an illusory experience. So
that really we may venture on the following comparison: we see the world
as falsely as the man in the train who imagines the landscape is rushing
past him. But to correct the illusory view of the world to which we
are prone is not so easy as correcting the illusion one has while looking
out of the train window.

It is at this special moment
of New Year's Eve, dear friends, when we are still within the year in
which we have had to correct so many current conceptions of the world,
that such a thought may enter your souls. You know what I have told
you of the experiences we would have if we were to live consciously
the life from childhood to a ripe age that now we live unconsciously.
I have told you how the human being matures in definite life periods,
so that at definite stages he is able to know certain things out of
his own power. People have to give up all manner of illusions concerning
the various conditions of maturity in human life — for the reasons
I have just been mentioning.

There are two kinds of illusions
to which we are most subject in life, illusions that impress themselves
upon our minds at such a time as this, as we glance over the past year
and toward the coming one. These illusions arise from our having no
idea in ordinary consciousness of how we relate to certain conditions
of the outer world. This outer world is not only an aggregate of things
kept in order in space; it is also a succession of events in time. Through
your senses you observe the outer events taking place around you, in
so far as these are natural events. You observe in the same way natural
events in the human kingdom. The world is engaged in the processes of
becoming. This is not generally recognized, but it is so. The processes
go on at a definite speed. There is always a certain speed in what is
coming about. But then turn your gaze from these events to what goes
on within yourself. You know how processes go on in you both consciously
and unconsciously. You do not stand in the world as a finished, self-contained
spatial being, but you stand within continual happening, continual becoming,
within processes continually going on and continually proceeding at
a definite speed.

Let us consider the speed
at which we ourselves hurry through the world in relation to the speed
belonging to natural events. Natural science pays no heed to the tremendous
difference existing between the speed of our own Passage through the
world and the speed of natural events. When we compare the part of our
life that is bound up with sense observation of the outer world and
the drawing of our life experiences from such observation, when we consider
this part of our life in its processes of arising and passing away and
compare it to the external natural events toward which our senses are
directed, we find that our passage through the stream of time is far
slower than that of natural events. This is important for us to bear
in mind. Events in nature take place comparatively quickly; we go more
slowly. Perhaps you will remember that I referred to this difference
when I gave a lecture at one time not far away, at Liestal, on “Human
Life from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science.” From birth to
change of teeth takes seven years for us human beings, that is, for
the development of the physical body. Then we need another seven years
for the development of our etheric body. Comparing ourselves with the
plant kingdom, for instance — which can be regarded for the moment
as corresponding to our etheric body — we can say that it takes
just one year for the plant kingdom, represented by an annual plant,
to go through all the development that can be gone through in the etheric
body. We human beings need seven years for what the annual plant goes
through in a single year. In other words, external nature, as revealed
in the plant world, hurries along seven times more quickly than ourselves.
And where the etheric world is concerned, everything is subject to the
laws revealed in the plant kingdom.

You will see the significance
of this, dear friends, if you reflect, for instance, on how things appear
when you are traveling in a slow train beside another, faster train
going in the same direction. When you yourself are traveling along slowly,
the speed of the other train will not seem to you as great as if you
were standing still. Or if you are traveling in a train fairly fast,
but one that is still going more slowly than an express train, the express
will appear to you quite slow. But go just as fast as the express and
you will stay beside it. Thus the picture you have of the other train
changes according to the speed at which you yourself are moving.

Now, the speed about which
we want to talk here, that is, the speed at which we let our etheric
body flow along, has to do with much more than merely spatial relations.
It has to do with our whole judgment and experience of, and our whole
attitude toward, the outer world. The spiritual scientist able to investigate
these matters will say: How would it be if human beings were differently
organized? if, for instance, we were so organized that we needed only
one year to pass from change-of-teeth to puberty? How would it be if
we had exactly the same speed as everything in outer nature that is
subject to the laws of etheric life? if we got our second teeth in our
first year of life, and by the end of our second year were as advanced
as we are now at puberty at the age of fourteen or fifteen? Well, dear
friends, then in the course of our own life we would be entirely within
the course of natural events in so far as they are subject to the etheric
life. We would no longer be able to distinguish ourselves from nature.
For in reality we are distinguished from nature through the fact of
having a different speed in moving forward through the stream of time.
Otherwise we would take it for granted that we belonged to nature. And
one thing above all must be pointed out: if we human beings were to
parallel the speed of events in external nature, we could never become
ill from an inner cause. For an illness coming to man from within actually
has its origin in the difference in speed of human beings from that
of natural events subject to the etheric life. Thus our human life would
be quite different if we were not distinguished from the outer world
by living seven times more slowly.

So we look back over the
year on this New Year's Eve unaware that in our experience during the
year we have fallen out of the life of the world. We first come to realize
this when after having lived a fairly good part of our life, we begin
to carry out repeatedly and really earnestly these New Year reflections.
People who can judge these things and who practice this retrospect regularly,
will agree with me out of their quite ordinary life-experience that
by the age, say, of fifty, after constant practice of this retrospect,
we are obliged to admit that we have never actually drawn out of the
year what it is possible to draw out. In many ways we leave unused the
experiences that could have enriched us. We learn seven times less than
we could learn from nature if we did not go through life seven times
more slowly than nature herself. Upon arriving at our fiftieth year
we have to say to ourselves: Had you actually been able to make full
use of each year by absorbing everything that the year wanted to give
you, then you would really only need to be seven or eight years old,
at the most ten or twelve; for during that much time you would have
sucked out everything that has in fact taken you five decades to absorb.

But there is something else.
We would never be able to perceive that the world is a material world
if we had the same speed of movement. Because we do have a different
speed, the world outside, moving more quickly, appears to us as material
while our own life appears to us as soul and spirit. If we were to move
forward with the same speed as external nature, there would be no distinction
between our soul-spiritual character and the course of outer nature.
We would consider ourselves part of outer nature and experience everything
as having the same soul-spiritual significance as ourselves. We would
be fitted into the world quite differently. When we look back over the
year on New Year's Eve we are deceived by reason of our own speed being
so much slower than that of the world. For although we may look back
carefully, much escapes us that would not if we were proceeding at the
same pace as the world. This, my dear friends, is an undertone arising
from the ground of anthroposophy, that should permeate the serious mood
that befits such retrospect on the part of those dedicated to spiritual
science. It should tell us that we human beings must look for other
approaches to the world than those that can only be found on the external
path of life, for that way only leads us to illusions.

This is one illusion. In
confronting the world with our senses we move much more slowly through
the world than does external nature.

But there is still another
illusion. It confronts us when we reflect upon all that lights up our
thinking, all that lends wings to our thinking, in so far as this arises
from within us. It confronts us when we observe the kind of thinking
that depends upon our will. The outer world of the senses does not indeed
give us what it could give us in response to our will. We have first
to go to meet the things, or events come to meet us. That is different
from when we grasp our concepts and ideas as they throw their faint
light out of our will. This again has another speed. When we consider
our soul-life in so far as it is a life of thought, though connected
with our will, our desires and wishes, we find that we have a different
speed from the speed of the world we are passing through between birth
and death. And if we investigate the matter anthroposophically we come
upon the curious fact that in our thoughts, in so far as they depend
upon our will, we move much more quickly than the external world.

Thus you see that in all
that is connected with our senses we move more slowly, in all that depends
upon our thinking we move more quickly, than the pace of life outside
us. Actually, we move so quickly in our thoughts — to the extent
that they are governed by our will, our longing, our wishes —
that we have the feeling, even though unconsciously, (and this is true
of everyone) that the year is really much too long. For our sense perception
it is seven times too short. For our comprehension through thought,
in so far as thoughts depend on our wishes and longings, we have the
deep unconscious feeling that the year is much too long. We would like
it to be much shorter, convinced that we would be able in a far shorter
time to understand the thoughts grasped from our own wishes, our own
will. In the depths of every human soul there is something that is never
brought into consciousness but that is working in the whole soul experience,
the whole soul-mood, and coloring all our subjective life. It is something
that tells us that so far as our thoughts are concerned, it would suffice
us to have a year of only Sundays and no weekdays at all. For in this
kind of thinking a human being lives in such a way that actually he
only wishes to experience the Sundays. Even if he is no longer conscious
of it, he thinks of the weekdays as holding him up; their place in his
life is only as something of which he has no need for his progress in
thinking. When we are concerned with thoughts dependent on our will,
on our longings and wishes, we are soon finished; in this sphere we
move quickly. This is one of the reasons for our egotism. And it is
one of the reasons for our obstinacy about what we ourselves think.

If you were not organized,
dear friends, in the way I have just described, if with your thoughts
you would really follow the course of the external world and not go
forward so fast—seven times as fast as the outer world, if you
did not only want to use Sundays, then your soul would be so attuned
to the world that your own opinion would never seem more valuable to
you than anyone else's. You would be able to adjust yourself easily
to another's opinion. Just think how large a part it plays in us as
human beings, this insistence of ours on the value of our own opinion!
From a certain point of view we always think others are in the wrong,
and they only become right when we feel disposed to consider them so.

Human beings are indeed
curiously contradictory creatures! On the one hand, in so far as we
have senses we move much more slowly than the outer world; on the other
hand, in so far as we have will in our thinking, we move much more swiftly.
So our view is blurred when we look out upon the world, because we are
always given to illusion. We do not realize that we have fallen away
from nature and are therefore able to become ill. Nor do we realize
how we acquire materialistic ideas about the world. Such materialistic
ideas are just as false as the idea that the landscape is rushing past
us in the opposite direction to our train. We only have these false
conceptions because we are moving seven times more slowly than the world.
And then also, we cherish the secret thought: if only it were always
Sunday! — because, comparatively speaking, the weekdays seem quite
unnecessary for the external ideas we want to form about the world out
of our wishes and out of our will. Everyone has this secret thought.
The human soul-attitude is not always described so truthfully as Bismarck
once described it. Bismarck made a curious remark about the last Hohenzollern
emperor. While expressing his opinion about what would happen to Germany
because of this emperor, he said, “This man wants to live as if
every day were his birthday. Most of us are glad to get our birthday
out of the way with all its good wishes and excitements, but he wants
a birthday all the time!” That was Bismarck's careful characterization
at the beginning of the nineties of the last century. Now, it is human
egotism that makes our birthday different from all other days. No one
really wants to have a birthday all the time, but from a certain point
of view one would like it always to be Sunday — one could easily
manage with that much knowledge! And although it wears a deceptive mask,
much in our mood of soul rests upon this wish of ours to have only Sundays.

In former epochs of evolution
the illusions arising from these things were corrected in manifold ways
by atavistic clairvoyance. They are corrected least of all in our age.
What will correct them, however, what must arise, what I ask you to
take into your souls today as a kind of social impulse, is this, that
we go deeply into spiritual science as it is intended here, that we
do not take it as theory but in the living way I have often described.
We then have the possibility within spiritual science of correcting
inwardly, in our souls, the illusions originating in those two sources
of error. Anthroposophical spiritual science — and let us be particularly
clear about this at the turning-point of the year—is something
that lets us experience the world outside us in accordance with reality,
the world that otherwise one does not experience truly, due to one's
going through the world too slowly. Everything depends, actually, on
how we ourselves relate to things. Just think for a moment how everything
does depend upon our own attitude toward the world! To become clear
about these things we should sometimes hold ideas before our souls that
as hypotheses are quite impossible. Think how the physicist tells you
that certain notes — C - D - E, say, in a certain octave —
have a certain number of vibrations, that is, the air vibrates a certain
number of times. You perceive nothing of the vibrations; you just hear
the notes. But imagine you were organized in such a way (this is of
course an impossible idea but it helps us to make something else intelligible)
— imagine that you could perceive each separate vibration in the
air: then you would hear nothing of the notes. The speed of your own
life depends entirely on how you perceive things. The world appears
to us as it does according to the speed we ourselves have as compared
to the world speed. But spiritual science makes us aware of existing
reality, apart from our personal relation to the world.

We speak in anthroposophy,
or spiritual science, of how our earth has gradually developed by first
going through a Saturn period, then a Sun period, and a Moon period,
finally arriving at this Earth period. But naturally everything continues
to be present. In the period in which we now live, our Earth existence,
other worlds are preparing their Saturn period, still others their Sun
period. This may be observed by spiritual science. Even now our Saturn
existence is still here. We know that our earth has gone beyond that
stage; other worlds have just reached it. One can observe how the Saturn
stage arises. The power to observe it, however, depends upon first changing
the speed in which one will follow the events; otherwise they cannot
be seen. Thus spiritual science in a certain connection enables us to
live with what is true and real, with what actually takes place in the
world. And if we take it up in a living way—this anthroposophical
spiritual science which I have described as the new creative work of
the Spirits of Personality—if we do not merely take it as a work
of man for our time but as a revelation from heavenly heights, if we
receive the impulses of spiritual science into ourselves livingly, then
the Spirits of Personality will do what is so necessary for our time:
that is, they will carry us out beyond the illusions caused by our speed
being different from that of the world. They will unite us properly
with the world so that, at least in our feelings about the world, we
will be able to correct many things.

Then we can experience the
results of our spiritual scientific striving. In the course of the past
year I have mentioned many of them. Tonight in this New Year's Eve retrospect
I want only to remind you of something I have spoken of before from
another aspect: that spiritual science, when taken up earnestly, keeps
us young in a certain way, does not let us grow old as we would without
it. This is one of the results of spiritual science. And it is of quite
special importance for the present time. It means that we are able,
however old we may be, to learn something in the way we learnt as a
child. Usually when someone arrives at his fiftieth year, he feels from
the standpoint of ordinary consciousness that he has lived in the world
a long time. Ask your contemporaries whether at fifty they still feel
inclined to do much in the way of learning! Even if they say “yes,”
notice whether they really do it. A lively acceptance of anthroposophical
concepts and ideas can gradually confer on people of a ripe age the
power still to learn as children learn — in other words, to become
increasingly young in soul — not abstractedly as often happens,
but in such a way that they are actually able to learn just as formerly
they learnt when eight or nine years old. Thereby the effect of the
difference between our speed and that of the world is in a certain way
adjusted. Thereby, though we may be of mature age chronologically, our
soul does not allow us to be old; our soul makes us a child in a certain
sense, makes us behave toward the world as a child. When we are at the
age of fifty we can say to ourselves: by living more slowly than the
external world we have actually only received into ourselves what we
would have received in seven or ten years if we had lived at the same
pace as the world. But by remaining fresh we have kept the power to
behave as we would have behaved at seven, eight, nine or ten years.
That makes a balance. And — because things always do balance in
the world—this brings about the other adjustment: the reducing,
in a way, what has a greater speed, namely, arbitrary thinking, those
Sunday wishes as I described them. This will make it possible not always
to want it to be Sunday but to use the weekdays too for learning, making
a school of the whole of life.

It is true that I am suggesting
a kind of ideal to you, one that is strictly anthroposophical. But perhaps,
dear friends, many of you will have had deeper experiences on the last
four New Year's Eves than on former ones. Anyone, however, studying
world events very seriously may well regard this present New Year's
Eve, in comparison to the last four, the gravest of them all. It demands
of us that we enter deeply into world events, uniting our thoughts with
all the ideas we can grasp through our relation to spiritual science,
concerning what is necessary for the world now and in the nearest future.
With the help of spiritual science we should stop sleeping in regard
to world events. We must become fully awake. A mere glance today will
show you that people are fast asleep. Compare modern life with the life
of former ages, and you will see how much it has changed for young and
old alike. How does this materialistic age affect youth today in an
overwhelming majority of cases? Truly, the ideals of our modern youth
are no longer as fresh, as bright, as alive, as they were in earlier
times. Youth has become a youth that makes demands. There is no great
desire on the part of youth to direct their soul-mood to looking forward
in life, to painting ideals so full of light for the future that they
are able to ennoble life. Already in youth there is the wish to exploit
what they find in life. But this results in the old being unable to
receive what can only be suitably received during old age. Youth uses
up its forces, and old age leaves the treasures of life strewn on its
path. Youth is no longer sufficiently hopeful, and old age has a resignation
that is not real. Today youth no longer turns to the old to ask: will
the young dreams that flow out of my heart be realized? Age hardly finds
it possible today to answer: Yes, they will be realized. Too frequently
it says: I too have dreamt, and alas, my youthful dreams have not been
fulfilled. — Life has a sobering effect upon us.

All these things are bound
up with the misfortunes of our time. They are all connected with what
has so profoundly shattered mankind. When you look at them carefully,
however, you will feel the need for anthroposophical impulses to be
deeply inscribed in your souls. For if we wish to be awake at this turning-point
of the year, we must ask ourselves: What does this era really signify?
What can the future bring? What can possibly evolve out of all that
civilized mankind has undergone in the chaos of these last years? If
we face these questions as wide-awake human beings, then another question
arises, one that is deeply connected with all our possible hopes for
the future of mankind. These hopes, I could also say these anxieties,
have often faced us in recent years, especially when we were giving
our attention to the human beings who are now four, five, six, seven
or eight years old. We who are older have much behind us that can support
our souls against what is coming. There was much in the past that gave
us joy, a joy that will not be experienced by those who are now five
or six or eight or nine.

But when we look back over
the year, dear friends, on this New Year's Eve, we find nothing in the
world is absolute. Everything appears to be an illusion to us, because
on the one hand we go too slowly, on the other hand too quickly in relation
to the world. Nothing is absolute; all is relative. And, as you will
see at once, the question that arises for us is not merely theoretical,
it is a very real question: When people wonder about the future of mankind,
how does it look in their souls if they have no connection with the
ideas of spiritual science? One can, of course, sleep; but even if one
is unconscious, this implies a lack of responsibility toward human progress.
One can also be awake, and we should be awake.Then that question can
still be asked concerning people's attitude in general: How is mankind's
future regarded by the human souls who are not able to approach spiritual
science? People of this kind are only too numerous in the world. I am
referring not only to the dried-up, self-satisfied materialists, but
to those countless others who today would like to be idealists in their
own fashion but have a certain fear of the real spiritual. They are
the abstract idealists who talk of all kinds of beautiful things, of
“Love your enemy,” and of splendid social reforms, but who
never succeed in coming to grips concretely with the world. They are
idealists from weakness, not from spiritual vision. They have no desire
to see the spirit; they want to keep it at a distance.

Tonight at this turning-point
of time, I should like to put the following question: When a man of
this kind is sincere in the belief that he lives for the spirit, when
he is convinced of the creative weaving of the spirit throughout the
world, but does not have the courage to meet it in all its concrete
reality as it wants to reveal itself today through spiritual science:
if such a man is a true representative of the whole, or even part, of
the modern world, what kind of picture do we have of him? I don't want
to give you an abstract description; I would rather give you one taken
from the newspapers of the world, of a man whom I have already mentioned
in another connection. It is a man who for the reasons just described
holds back from taking up spiritual science, believing that he can attain
social ideals without it, believing that he can speak of human progress
and the true being of man without taking up spiritual science, a man
who from his own standpoint is honest. I have often mentioned his name
— Walther Rathenau — and I have pointed out what is decidedly
weak about him; you will remember, however, that I once referred favorably
to his “Critique of the Times.” He is so eminently a type,
indeed, one of the best examples of the people of our day who are idealists,
people who hold the belief that a spiritual something pervades and permeates
the world, but who are not able to find it in its concreteness, that
spiritual reality which alone can bring healing for all that is now
pulsing so destructively through the world. It would be helpful, therefore,
to learn how such a man regards the present course of the world from
his standpoint outside spiritual science, what such a man says to himself
in all honesty. That is always instructive, my dear friends. I would
like, therefore — because all of you may not have read it —
to bring before our souls the message Walther Rathenau
[ Note 20 ]
has just written to the world at large.

He writes the following:
“A German calls to all the nations. With what right? With the
right of one who foretold the war, who foresaw how the war would end,
who recognized the catastrophe that was coming, who braved mockery,
scorn, and doubt and for four long years exhorted those in power to
seek reconciliation. With the right of one who for decades carried in
his heart the premonition of complete collapse, who knows it is far
more serious than either friends or enemies think it to be. Furthermore,
with the right of one who has never been silent when his own people
were in the wrong and who dares to stand up for the rights of his people.

“The German people
are guiltless. In innocence they have done wrong. Out of the old, childlike
dependence they have in all innocence placed themselves at the service
of their lords and masters. They did not know that these lords and masters,
though outwardly the same, had changed inwardly. They knew nothing of
the independent responsibility a people can have. They never thought
of revolution. They put up with militarism, they put up with feudalism,
letting themselves be led and organized. They allowed themselves to
kill and be killed as ordered, and believed what was said to them by
their hereditary leader. The German people have innocently done wrong
by believing. Our wrong will weigh heavily upon us. If the Powers will
look into our hearts they will recognize our guiltlessness.”

You see here a man pointing
to what Judaism and Christianity point, namely, a Providence —
Who is grasped, however, in an abstract form.

“ Germany is like
those artificially fertile lands that flourish as long as they are watered
by a canal system. If a single sluice bursts, all life is destroyed
and the land becomes a desert.

“We have food for
half the population. The other half have to work for the wages of other
nations, buying raw materials and selling manufactured goods. If either
the work or the return on the work is withheld, they die or lose their
house. By working to the extremity of their powers our people saved
five or six milliards a year. This went into the building of plants
and factories, railways and harbors, and the carrying on of research.
This enabled us to maintain a profit and a normal growth. If we are
to be deprived of our colonies, our empire, our metals, our ships, we
will become a powerless, indigent country. If it comes to that —
well, our forefathers were also poor and powerless, and they served
the spirit of the earth better than we. If our imports and exports are
restricted — and, contrary to the spirit of Wilson's Fourteen
Points, we are threatened with having to pay three or four times the
amount of the damage in Belgium and northern France, which probably
runs to twenty milliards — well, what happens then? Our trade
will be without profit. We will work to live miserably with nothing
to spare. We will be unable to maintain things, renew things, develop
things, and the country with its buildings, its streets, its organization,
will go to rack and ruin. Technology will lose ground; research will
come to an end. We have the choice of unproductive trade or emigration
or profoundest misery.

“It means extermination.
We will not complain but accept our destiny and silently go under. The
best of us will neither emigrate nor commit suicide but share in this fate
with our fellows. Most of the people have not yet realized their fate;
they do not yet know that they and their children have been sacrificed.
Even the other peoples of the earth do not yet realize that this is
a question of the very life of an entire race of human beings. Perhaps
this is not even realized by those with whom we have been fighting. Some
of them say ‘Justice!’, others say ‘Reparation!’;
there are even those who say ‘Vengeance!’ Do they realize that
what they are calling ‘Justice,’ ‘Reparation,’
‘Vengeance’ is murder?

“We who go forward
mutely but not blindly to meet our destiny, now once more raise our
voice and make our plaint for the whole world to hear. In our profound
and solemn suffering, in the sadness of separation, in the heat of lament,
we call to the souls of the peoples of the earth—those who were
neutral, those who were friendly, those belonging to free countries
beyond the seas, to the young builders of new states. We call to the
souls of the nations who were our enemies, peoples of the present day
and those who will come after us:

“We are being
annihilated. The living body and spirit of Germany is being put to death.
Millions of German human creatures are being driven to hunger and death,
to homelessness, slavery and despair. One of the most spiritual peoples on
the whole earth is perishing. Her mothers, her children, those still
unborn, are being condemned to death.”

There is no passion, dear
friends, in all this; it is shrewd forethought—dispassionately,
intellectually calculated. The man is a genuine materialist able to
assess the real conditions calmly and intellectually. He entertains
no illusions, but from his own materialistic standpoint honestly faces
the truth. He has thought it all out; it is not something that can be
disproved by a few words or by feelings of sympathy or antipathy. It
has been thought through by the dispassionate intellect of a man who
for decades has been able to say “this will come,” who has
also had the courage to say these things during the war.

It was to no avail. In Berlin
and other places in Germany I always introduced into my lectures just
what Rathenau was saying at the time.

“We, knowing, seeing,
are being annihilated, exterminated, by those who also know and see. Not
like the dull people of olden times who were led stupid and unsuspecting
into banishment and slavery; and not by idolators who fancy they are
doing honor to a Moloch. No, we are being annihilated by peoples who
are our brothers, who have European blood, who acknowledge God and Christ
upon Whom they have built their life and customs and moral foundations,
peoples who lay claim to humanity, chivalry, and civilization, who deplore
the shedding of human blood, who talk of ‘a just peace’ and
‘a League of Nations’ and take upon themselves the
responsibility for the destiny of the entire world.

“Woe to those, and to
the souls of those, who dare to give this blood-rule the name
‘justice’! Have courage, speak out, call it by its name
— for its name is Vengeance!

“But I ask you, you
spiritual men among all the peoples, priests of all the religions, and
you who are scholars, statesmen, artists. I ask you, reverend Father,
highest dignitary of the Catholic Church, I ask you in the name of God:

“Were it the last,
most wretched of all nations, would it be right that for vengeance'
sake one of the peoples of the earth should be exterminated by other
peoples who are their brothers? Ought a living race of spiritual Europeans,
with their children and those still unborn, ought they to be robbed
of their spiritual and bodily existence, condemned to forced labor,
cast out from the community of the living?

“If this monstrous
thing comes to pass, in comparison with which this most terrible war
was only a prelude, the world shall know what is happening, the world
shall know what it is in the very act of perpetrating. It shall never
dare to say: ‘We did not know this. We did not wish it.’
Before God, in the face of its own responsibility to eternity, it shall
say openly, calmly, coldly: ‘We know it and we desire it.’

Rathenau also wishes mankind
to awake and to see!

“Milliards! Fifty,
a hundred, two hundred milliards — what is that? Is it a question
of money?

“Money, the wealth or
poverty of a man, these count for little. Every one of us will face poverty
with joy and pride if it will save our country. Yet in the unfortunate
language of economic thought we have no other way of expressing the
living force of a people except in the wretched concept of millions
and tens of millions. We do not measure a man's life-force according
to the grams of blood he has, and yet we can measure the life-force
of a nation according to the two or three hundred billion it possesses.
Loss of fortune is then not only poverty and want but slavery, double
slavery for a people having to buy half of what they need to sustain
life. This is not the arbitrary, personal slavery of old that was either
terrible or mild; this is the anonymous, systematic, scientific forced-labor
between peoples. In the abstract concept of a hundred billion we find
not money and well-being alone, but blood and freedom. The demand is
not that of a merchant, ‘Pay me money!’ but Shylock's demand,
‘Give me the blood of your body!’ It is not a matter of
the Stock Exchange; by the mutilation of the body of the state, by the
withdrawal of land and power, it is life itself. Anyone coming to Germany
in twenty years' time…”

What now follows is once
more the result of cold intellectual foresight. This is not spoken in
the way people speak who are asleep when they observe world events!

“In twenty years'
time anyone coming to Germany who knew it as one of the most flourishing
countries on the earth, will bow their heads in shame and grief. The
great cities of antiquity, Babylon, Nineva, Thebes, were built of white
clay. Nature let them fall into decay and leveled them to the ground,
or rounded them off into hills. German cities will not survive as ruins
but as half-destroyed stone blocks, still partly occupied by wretched
people. A few quarters in a town will be alive, but everything bright,
everything cheerful will have disappeared. A company of tired people
move along the crumbling footpaths. Liquor joints are conspicuous by
their lights. Country roads are in terrible condition, woods have been
cut down, in the fields little grain is sprouting. Harbors, railways
and canals have fallen into disrepair, and everywhere there stand as
unhappy landmarks the high buildings of former greatness falling into
ruin. And all around us are flourishing countries, old ones grown stronger
and new ones in the brilliance and vigor of modern technique and power,
nourished on the blood of this dying country, and served by its slave-driven
sons. The German spirit that has sung and thought for the world becomes
a thing of the past. A people God created to live, a people still young
and vigorous, leads an existence of living death.

“There are Frenchmen
who say, ‘Let this people die. No longer do we want a strong neighbor.’
There are Englishmen who say, ‘Let this people die. No longer
do we want a rival on the continent.’ There are Americans who
say, ‘Let this people die. No longer do we want an economic competitor.’
— Are these persons really representative of their nations? No,
indeed. All strong nations forswear fear and envy. Are those who thirst
for vengeance voicing the feelings of their nations? Emphatically, no.
This ugly passion is of short duration in civilized men.

“Nevertheless, if
those who are fearful or envious or revengeful prevail for a single
hour, in the hour of decision, and if the three great statesmen of their
nations violently contend with one another, then destiny is fulfilled.

“Then the cornerstone
of Europe's arch, once the strongest stone, is crushed; the boundaries
of Asia are pushed forward to the Rhine; the Balkans reach out to the
North Sea. And a despairing horde, a spirit alien to European ways,
encamp before the gates of Western civilization, threatening the entrenched
nations not with weapons but with deadly infection.

“Right and prosperity
can never arise out of wrong.

“In a way that no
wrong has ever yet been expiated, Germany is expiating the sin of its
innocent dependence and irresponsibility. If, however, after calm and
cool reflection the Western nations put Germany slowly to death out
of foresight, interest or revenge, and call this ‘justice’
while announcing a new life for the peoples, a Peace of Reconciliation
to last forever, and a League of Nations, then justice will never again
be what it was and, in spite of all their triumphs, mankind will never
again find happiness. A leaden weight will lie upon our planet and the
coming race will be born with a conscience no longer clear. The stain
of guilt, which now might still be wiped out, will then become ineradicable
and lasting on the body of the earth. In the future, dissension and
strife will become more bitter and disintegrating than ever before,
drenched in a feeling of common wrongs. Never has such power, such responsibility,
weighed upon the brows of a triumvirate. If the history of mankind has
willed that three men in a single hour should make their decision concerning
the fate of centuries and of millions of men on the earth, then it has
willed this: that a single great question of faith should be addressed
to the victorious civilized and religious nations. The question is:
Humanity or power? reconciliation or vengeance? freedom or oppression?

“Think! consider!
you people of every land! This hour is not only decisive for us Germans,
it is decisive for you and us — for us all.

“If the decision is
made against us we will shoulder our destiny and go to our earthly extermination.
You will not hear us complain. But our plaint will be heard where no
human voice has ever cried in vain.”

My dear friends, this is
the product of sober intellectual foresight, most assuredly not arising
from chauvinism but from materialistic thinking. I have brought it to
you because we live in a world in which people are most disinclined,
even today, to consider the gravity of the present situation. Plenty
of people will celebrate this New Year's Eve not only as it has been
celebrated during the last four years but also as it was celebrated
before this catastrophe. And countless people will take it as disturbing
their peace, as upsetting their carefree souls, if one merely draws
their attention to the situation.

“Oh, it won't be as
bad as all that!” — though it may not be put into words,
this is what is inwardly felt, otherwise people would be judging the
times differently.

For how many individuals
will acknowledge the truth of what we have had to repeat over and over
again during these years? — years in which we have always been
hearing the following: “When peace comes, everything will be just
the same as it used to be, this way and that way and the other way.”
How many individuals are awake to what has had to be repeated so constantly:
the impossible prospect of finding conditions again as people are still
allowing themselves to picture them?

We are dealing here with
matters that have been thoughtfully estimated. And things appear quite
differently according to whether they are estimated in a spirit of materialism
or from the standpoint of anthroposophical impulses. From an external
view the statements seem so right! But since there is no prospect of
individuals responding consciously to what Walther Rathenau has brought
forward as a last-moment expedient—namely, that the peoples should
consult their conscience — alas, this talk of conscience! —
what can one say? it will certainly not be consulted! Outwardly that
is the way events will happen.

One can see only one hope
as one looks back at how this was all prepared in the past, certainly
not by any particular nation but by the whole of civilized mankind.
There is just one hope: to look back on this New Year's Eve to a great
universal picture, to what has previously been experienced by mankind;
to realize that in a certain sense men have now become sufficiently
mature to bring this to an end; and to accept what the new Spirits of
Personality now wish to bring down to earth from the heavenly heights.
But here, dear friends, insight and will must meet. What the Spirits
of Personality as new Creators are wishing to reveal will only be able
to come into the world when it finds a fruitful soil in human hearts,
human souls, human minds, when mankind is ready to accept the impulses
of spiritual science. And what this prosaic materialistic mind has been
saying about the material impulses that are actively working, is indeed
correct. People should pay attention to what comes from a sober mind
like Walther Rathenau — that is, the people who are asserting
from a more frivolous standpoint what our times are going to bring forth.
When people were in a state of utter intoxication and dreaming, when,
if one speaks truly, they were talking complete nonsense — if
they could only have looked ahead a little! — but they have stopped
now, at least some of them — at that time one might have heard:
Out of this war will come a new idealism, a new sense of religion. How
often I have heard this! And it was being written over and over again,
especially by professors, even professors of theology. You don't even
have to go very far; it doesn't even have to be Sunday for you to find
in less than ten minutes a theological professor announcing wise prophecies
of this kind. But people are already talking differently. Some who have
come to the top are saying that now a time of healthy atheism may well
be coming, and mankind will be cured of the religion-game instigated
in recent times so particularly by the poets and writers. Such opinions
are already forthcoming. And they come from persons who should be listening
to some of the things a man is saying who is able to judge soberly how
reality is taking shape.

In response to all this
one can only say: World affairs would indeed develop as we have just
heard if only materialistic impulses were working in the world, in human
heads and human hearts! If this were actually the case, truly not only
Germany, Middle Europe and Russia would be in chains of frightful slavery
but the whole civilized world would gradually be similarly enchained,
never to know happiness again. For it is what has come from the past
that has now made the world come to an end! New impulses do not come
from that source. New impulses come from the spiritual world. They do
not come, however, unless human beings go to meet them, unless they
receive them with a free will. Deliverance can only come when there
are human souls ready to meet the spirit, the spirit that will reveal
itself in a new way through the Spirits of Personality. There must be
human souls who will become creative through these very Time Spirits.
There is no other way out. There are only two ways to be honest: either
to speak as Walther Rathenau has spoken, or to point to the necessity
of turning toward the spiritual world.

The latter way will be the
subject of our New Year's Day reflections tomorrow.

Our survey on this New Year's
Eve is not meant to be a mere comfortable transition into the new year.
It should not be — for anyone who is awake. It should be taken
in all earnestness. It should make us aware of what is lying in the
womb of time if the Spirit-Child is not to be given its place there.
A true perspective of the new year can only be experienced in the light
of the spirit. Let us try at this moment between now and tomorrow to
tune our souls to this serious mood. Tonight I would conclude only with
an earnest word of direction. I myself do not yet wish to show you the
actual way; I would only draw your attention to how this New Year's
Eve has been received in the soul of an honest man who finds as he observes
the world only material powers holding sway. It must be so regarded
by the heads, the hearts, the minds and souls — if sincere —
of those who do not want to turn to the spirit. There are others, also
materialists, who are not sincere; they are sleeping, because then they
do not need to admit their insincerity.

This is the view presenting
itself to our retrospective vision. This is the New Year's Eve mood!
Tomorrow we want to see, from a consideration of the spiritual world,
what impression is made upon us by the outlook into the future, by the
mood of the New Year.